


memories you bury or live by

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [51]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky takes care of Steve, Caregiver Fatigue, Dementia, Disabled Character, Grief, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, So is seeing horrible things happen to them, Steve is also messed up, bad day, watching a loved one die is also trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or it's more like things shoved in a closet or stuck on a pile out of the way, actually. And maybe you're not even thinking about dealing with them later. Maybe you can't think why you'd have to. They just . . .go there. You need stuff out of the way, so you open the door and put something on a shelf. In a box. Put the box on the pile. Shift the pile into a corner. </p><p>You don't pay attention as the pile gets too high or the closet gets too full and then everything - every single God-damn thing - falls on your head all at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	memories you bury or live by

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. This was on a prompt from a friend.

The week after his mother died and two days after he finished moving his stuff to Bucky's place, Steve got probably as sick as he'd ever been. 

It's funny in a way, because now he knows enough that he's pretty sure it was rheumatic fever, one more flare up of the disease it turns out was the front-runner to kill him, wearing out his heart until it stopped. He'd always thought his lungs would take him first, either from the asthma or the gnawing background worry about a long-dormant case of TB, but it turns out it would've been his heart and the fevers, in the end. 

At the time, they'd had no idea. He'd just been _sick_ , sicker even than the scarlet fever, than any round of influenza or pneumonia. Sick enough there's at least four days he doesn't remember at _all_ , and sick enough that at some point Bucky'd managed to drag in a doctor. 

Steve'd found that out by accident, from a neighbour. Bucky hadn't mentioned it, and Steve never asked. He'd been pretty sure if he had, and if he'd asked the inevitable next question - _where the money'd come from?_ \- . . . well, if there'd've been anything to lie about, Bucky would have, so Steve couldn't've believed any answer he got, and it was just . . .easier to pretend he hadn't heard and didn't have anything to ask about anyway. 

And time had moved on and there'd been that year's flu and the next year's flu and colds and everything else he always caught and it sort of, kind of faded out of his mind. 

Okay, he'd done his best to make it fade. And then - well. There'd been everything else. 

What's never faded, though, is knowing that he went all six months it took his mother to go from too sick to work to too sick to live without catching a single solitary cold, never mind anything else - in spite of not sleeping right, in spite of not eating right, in spite of all of it. Probably the longest time he ever remembers not being sick - and then it was almost like it all fell on him, all at once. 

Like the debts of the dead after a funeral, which thank God he hadn't gotten buried with. 

And considering he hasn't ever forgotten that, he probably should've seen things coming, but - well, he's never tried to say he isn't pretty good at _not_ noticing the stuff he doesn't want to notice, be it anything from having a headache to the sheer impossibility of surviving a fall out of a building. 

And sometimes he forgets that the bit where body and brain often work kind of the same apply to him, too. 

 

It's a little like the wobbly leg of a chair. You don't notice it for so long and then, when you do, you think _oh, not a big deal - I'll fix that later, when I've got a minute._ And you think that over and over, and you never quite have that minute, or you never quite remember. There's always something else to do, or something else to pay attention to, or the tools aren't there, or you're tired, or _something_ and besides it basically still works, right? It's not a big problem yet. It can go to the bottom of the list. 

And then one day you sit down and you hit the floor before you even figure out what that cracking sound is. If you're lucky, you weren't holding something hot, messy or fragile when you fell. 

Actually it's absolutely nothing like that, not really, but that's one way to think about it, afterwards. It's one way to look back on it and explain why you ended up where you did, sprawled on the ground bruised and probably covered with hot coffee or soup, wondering what in Christ's name just happened. 

It's just -

That doesn't make it better. 

Or it's more like things shoved in a closet or stuck on a pile out of the way, actually. And maybe you're not even thinking about dealing with them later. Maybe you can't think why you'd have to. They just . . .go there. You need stuff out of the way, so you open the door and put something on a shelf. In a box. Put the box on the pile. Shift the pile into a corner. 

You don't pay attention as the pile gets too high or the closet gets too full and then everything - every single God-damn thing - falls on your head all at once. 

That's probably more what it's like. 

 

And this time it's Tony and an argument about government, taxes, labour, unions, the free market, everything. And then Steve realizing at about the point that he gives up and calls a halt that they're not even disagreeing at principal, just - 

\- well. Tony's cynicism on the question of ever getting anyone into a position of power to actually _do_ any of the things that, when you get down to it, they both think should be done . . . that cynicism is just about all-encompassing, enough that he just throws up his hands at it, and Steve can't handle that. Not right now. And right now, at least, Steve's counter-arguments are all coming from the past, from a world that doesn't exist anymore, and a place that mostly says, _I want to go home,_ and thinks home is a long time ago. That he wants to go back there. Then. 

Except he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. There isn't any place or time that actually existed, that he actually _experienced in his life_ that he wants to go back to. If there isn't sickness and poverty and a certain kind of loneliness, a certain kind of hopelessness, there's _war_ , war and genocide and everything else, and he's not stupid enough to think he actually wants that back. That he wasn't charmed to get as far as he did, how he did, without worse happening. That's not what he wants. 

What he wants is something that never actually existed, not for him or for anyone else; what he wants is a kid's fantasy from the inner echoes of the kid probably nobody gets rid of, each kid imagining their own little utopia. 

And that's a stupid place to have any kind of argument from, especially with Tony. So he makes himself stop, apologize tersely and leave, and pretends he can't feel Tony's gaze on his back when he does. 

And then, this time it's a visit to Peggy that was probably a bad idea to start with, and definitely doesn't help. Because it's one of the days that happens, where dementia doesn't even mess things up in reasonable, predictable ways but just tosses out confusion and emotion. If recovery isn't linear, neither is collapse; each stumble is harder and harder, because it's hard to know which ones are permanent, which ones can be backed away from. 

It's like sandpaper on an open wound, honestly. 

He does help the nurses get Peggy to calm down and go to bed. Even if she doesn't recognize him she's willing to believe he's a friend, a relative, someone who has her best interests at heart, where the nursing staff are all suspect. There's something in that, even if it's bittersweet. After the sedatives take effect and she falls asleep, he kisses her forehead and goes looking for something to do to settle himself before he goes home. 

And _then_ , this time, it's an endless string of absolutely nothing to be that upset about that strips skin off him anyway. An unpleasant customer in line in front of him at a coffee shop, a cashier more flustered than useful, someone with too much perfume on the subway, someone's irritating nasal voice on their cell-phone talking about the ridiculously complicated fights between and around it had to be at least twelve people connected Steve can't figure out how, but who he definitely wouldn't call "friends", because every single one of them seems (from what he can't avoid overhearing) to be as selfish and self-centred as, as, he doesn't even know. He doesn't have a simile. 

It doesn't help knowing that on a different day all of this would slide by without him noticing: he notices now, and it grates and abrades and he doesn't know what to do about that. 

 

There are things you can get away with when you weigh less than a hundred pounds soaking wet that you can't when you're who Steve is now. One of them is taking out frustration by way of your grip on the cup you're washing, and when the one Steve's washing cracks and then shatters in his hand, it cuts him on the way out just to pay him back for his thoughtlessness. Steve bites back a curse and sticks his thumb in his mouth to catch the first blood and then says, "I'm fine," before Bucky asks. 

He doesn't expect a reply, really; Bucky's sitting in the living-room with headphones on, listening to something in Mandarin he'd downloaded onto the tablet, kitten sleeping on his stomach in the sun. Steve'd been a little grateful for the quiet scene when he'd come home; appreciated it. He only bothers to say anything because the headphones wouldn't be enough to keep Bucky from hearing, so this way Bucky won't feel like he needs to get up and check. 

He doesn't expect to hear Bucky's voice _just_ a few paces to the left saying, "For some definitions of fine, yeah. Sure." 

Steve finishes pressing paper-towel against the cut before he glances up to see where Bucky got to. It makes sense he didn't hear Bucky, Steve thinks, but he'd've thought he'd've heard Abrikoska's protest at being moved. But maybe not; maybe he'd been distracted by the noise of the glass shards in the water, or of the paper-towel roll, or just by calling himself an idiot. It's been a while since he accidentally broke a glass. 

Bucky's standing in the doorway between kitchen and dining-room, leaning on it with his left arm up over his head, forearm against the bottom of the arch. He cants his head briefly at the sink. "Breaking shit and cutting myself up with it is my job, Steve," he says, mildly. "You're stealing my job."

Steve knows the look he gives Bucky is sour instead of amused, can't seem to help it. Feels abraded, more irked by the teasing than he wants to be. He manages to shake that off a bit when he shrugs and replies, "I figured I should see what was so fun about it," hand still closed around the cloth he's got against his thumb to stop the bleeding. 

"Uhhuh," Bucky says, a note to that, a kind of scepticism that Steve's going to pretend he doesn't hear, pretends it fast enough that he's not even sure why. "Go paint your thumb with superglue, already, you can find out how exciting that is, too." 

Some deep part of Steve wants to bristle, wants to snipe back, and he doesn't even know why. 

 

It's 2PM and no matter what Steve does he can't seem to settle - not into listening to anything, not into watching anything, not into doing anything there is to do, right down to stuff like making a grocery list. And he knows Bucky's watching him and that itches into worry that his agitation'll end up contagious; when the attempt to sit down and _read_ fails, Steve gets up and says, "I'm going for a walk." 

Bucky looks up from reading - something in Korean this time - with the kitten on his stomach again and just looks at Steve for a second. Then he says, in a neutral voice, "You know that's not gonna make you feel any better." 

And there's something familiar about that, something that itches and almost makes Steve want to pick a fight, start an argument and he can't figure out what the fuck is _wrong_ with himself. The urge unsettles and unbalances him enough that he doesn't really answer, just waves it away and goes to get his coat instead. He thinks he hears Bucky's faint sigh but he ignores it; notices Bucky standing up and coming to stand beside the couch, but he ignores that, too; maybe even ignores Bucky's first, quieter, "Steve, c'mere," and then, "Steve," and a second sigh when Steve doesn't respond. 

He doesn't know why he doesn't. It's just like he can pretend he doesn't hear. It's childish and stupid and he does it anyway. And he doesn't know - 

Then Bucky says, "For the love of fucking _Christ_ , Steve, stop being such a God-damn stoic idiot, _put_ the coat down and come _here_ ," and Steve would have an easier time ignoring a gunshot. 

Because - 

Because. 

Because those words, that sentence, that _tone of voice_ , they might as well come from years, too many years ago, come right out of the past to hit Steve in the chest and knock most, all of the breath out of him. That tone, those words, right down to the rhythm of them, they hit Steve with memories and years and every time, every endless round of getting sick and getting better and either end of the miseries he couldn't quite dodge and always knocked him off his feet. 

The words, and Bucky standing there, leaning his hip against the couch, arms folded and eyes saying that he knows _exactly_ what he just did, and did it on purpose. 

And it's been half a dozen years. It's been half a dozen decades, but really it hasn't, not to him, it's only been years and there are so many more of them on the one side than the other. So many more spending so much time struggling to breathe, struggling to get out of _bed_ , to ignore the way his head ached or his back hurt, or - 

Half a dozen years ago, when they were losing the war; half a dozen years ago when he _knew_ every exam he walked into was him beating his head against a rock that wouldn't move but he did it anyway. Half a dozen decades doesn't really mean a damn thing, but a half-dozen years has never felt so God-damn long. 

Steve hangs his coat back up without really thinking. His hands feel clumsy and numb. And he feels . . . too much. He doesn't even know _what_ he feels, he just knows there's too much of it, and it fills up his throat and maybe that's just as well, because it fills his head, too and if it chokes him it means he can't say anything he's going to regret. It fills up his head, comes with memories, images, scent and sound and everything else, _everything_ else. 

A whole different fucking world. 

And the thing is. The thing is that it's not just different for the trappings. It's not just different because of the surface, the superficial things like smartphones and washing machines, or even deeper things like seventy years of history and everything that means, there are - 

It's - 

It's things written in bone. It's the things you don't even know are there, it's the things you never think about. The things you take for granted, the assumptions you live, the promises you don't realize you're making or counting on until you - 

\- until they're broken and you're left standing there, wondering how you could ever have thought they could be kept. By you. By anyone. How you could have believed these things were solid, these things were _real_ , something you could depend on, something you didn't have to question, something guaranteed. 

How you could be so thoughtless, reckless, _childish_. How you could have forgotten you're not that blessed and even if you were, God's never made _that_ kind of covenant. 

And there's a flood in Steve's head of that, of _then_ , of the time when he didn't even believe those promises because he didn't _think_ about them. Didn't have to think about them. Like he didn't have to believe in tables or sunlight or other people's fists. They were things he _knew_. 

And one of them had always been _it'll get better._ And one of them had always been _we'll get through this_. And one of them had always been _you'll be there_ and maybe he'd known that with more assurance than any of the others, because Steve might not get better after _this_ time he got sick, and they might end up out on the street but he never had to think about whether Bucky would be there. 

Until he was looking down a canyon full of ice and snow, until he was watching the other half of the world become one human body, falling, and he realized just how God-damned stupid and childish he'd been. 

Too little, too late. 

Then he'd woken up in someone's best guess at someone else's memory, in a bad model of recovery rooms he'd actually seen, and found out that the choices he'd made were bigger than he thought, and that for him even death and taxes weren't certain. That he shouldn't count on anything, take anything for granted. 

That there aren't any promises. Even the damned Arctic Ocean can't promise him what it promises every other human being, except maybe, maybe the one standing across from Steve now. And maybe someone else would be happy they don't have to worry about death but Steve never _had_. Death didn't scare him, the last time he'd let death scare him he'd been nine years old and he'd figured out that he probably wasn't going to live to see thirty. He took death for granted and fear changed, ended up being all about why he died and what he did first. He'd stopped caring about whether he'd die so he wouldn't be afraid anymore and it worked. 

And then it turns out death's not a promise. Not for him. And neither is anything else and with his head full of memory Steve doesn't know what to do with that. Because the last time death scared him he'd been nine years old and out of his head with fever - just one time out of so many - and the bottomless, endless feeling had been almost exactly like this. 

All of that hits him, _all of it_ , like a striking bullet blocked by armour, like a punch to the throat, and he's losing years and composure at the same time. 

Bucky just looks at him, level and steady, like he's waiting for something. And somewhere above it all, Steve realizes he'd thought he'd got used to this again, had been so God-damned happy to get used to it again, to having the person who can see through him, can reach through all his speeches, his best oratory, and rip the bottom out of it and show him what he was trying, is trying so hard to ignore. 

Counters the invocation of sacrifice with _right, because you've got nothing to prove_ , isn't _afraid_ of doing that, does it when nobody else will. Pulls out the hidden ignoble threads Steve's trying to ignore. And it's not . . .everything, it's not the whole truth but it's part of it, was part of it, and it's the part Steve tends to ignore and it's the part that catches him later and he thought he was used to having Bucky again and he's not. 

"Steve," Bucky repeats, like he didn't just rip a hole in time and through Steve's head, "come here already." 

The last time Bucky'd said that, done this, it'd been the last real fight they had, after the first enlistment card with 4F stamped on it in red like a judgement. That's how it'd felt. And they'd fought because Steve said he was going to go somewhere else, give a different address and Bucky'd kind of exploded and Steve'd said some things he doesn't even like to remember now, in the rush of despair and resentment and fury, and then in the sick cold afterward, he'd been sure he'd just crossed lines that meant he'd need to find somewhere else to live. 

Except he hadn't believed it then, either, and when Bucky'd called him back he'd gone

Steve finds himself staring at the floor in front of him. Finds that his vision blurs. Ends up looking up to say, "You fucking jerk," because it's all he's _got_ , but ends up holding out one hand to let Bucky pull him over, too. 

"Yeah, shut up," Bucky retorts, "fucking would-be-martyr," and it's been a while since he's outright called Steve that, too. 

He pulls Steve past him and the arm of the couch, slides himself over the arm and pulls Steve down onto it with him. Steve resists, but only until Bucky gives him a long look and says, "Don't make me fucking trip you, Steve, you already cut your thumb open today, you don't need the damn bruises," and Steve gives up because he still hasn't gotten that composure back by half and he can shut himself down or he can just give the Hell up and actually he's not sure he _can_ shut himself down. 

Maybe he could make it all something else. Maybe he could make everything anger, make it rage if he really tried but he's not, he can't do that. Not now, and not here. 

But he can give up. Here and now he can give up and maybe it's the only place he can. So he does.

Bucky's not exactly bothering to be subtle: when he pulls Steve down to him he settles them so that he's half-sitting up, leaning into the corner between the back and the arm of the couch, and Steve's settled against him, head against Bucky's back shoulder. The way they used to sit when the fever was bad, or the headache was too much or whatever else drove it, and before they got old enough that Steve couldn't handle it anymore, before the self-consciousness outweighed the comfort. 

The familiarity hurts and Steve finds himself clinging to it anyway; the familiarity's real, it's important; fuck, he's _used_ it, framed it, to fight the worst snarls in Bucky's brain, the ones that'd have him hiding and waiting alone until the bad shit - minutes, hours, who the hell knows - passes. And Steve's mind stutters a bit with pained laughter, because it's not even sauce-for-gander-sauce-for-goose because they're just two of the same; he manages a half-hearted shot at wry when he says, "I used to fit better," but it's more because he can't stand not pointing out that he _knows_ what buttons Bucky's aiming for. 

Not that it does anything for how hard they're hitting. 

"Yeah," Bucky says, lightly running the fingers of his left hand over Steve's scalp, "and who's fault is it that went and changed, huh? Five minutes," he adds, when Steve can't help laughing weakly, "five minutes I leave you alone, Steve - I wasn't even out of the country, I wasn't even out of the fucking _city_ yet, you know? I leave you alone for five minutes and you're already signed up to be some mad scientist's lab rat." 

Steve's chest aches, but he says, "Right. So it's your fault." And this time Bucky laughs, the new laugh, the changed one, quiet and edged and in the back of his throat. Thinking that makes Steve stop the thought dead, makes him reach out and pull Bucky's left hand down to where he can hold it and trace the grooves of metal with his fingers. Close the door as best he can, and think about here and think about now. 

He tries not to look back. It doesn't help, sometimes it's flat out poison and it doesn't _matter_. Nobody's who they used to be. Steve sure as Hell isn't, and he knows that. 

"Yeah," Bucky says, his voice just a touch wry, "well, if you hadn't signed up to be a lab-rat, I'd be lucky if I was dead and everyone else would be licking HYDRA's boots, so I guess it turned out okay. For once." 

Steve's throat closes; he tries to clear it and manages to say, "I think someone would've come up with something." And he wants to think that's true. 

"I don't," Bucky says, simply, like they're talking about what colour to paint the walls, instead of the fate of the whole damn world. "I think we'd've been pretty much fucked if it hadn't been for you. I sure as fuck would've been. I think you're stuck with that, Steve." 

And it's hard to answer that when the place in his head where arguments get built is full of screaming and light, or with the bottom dropped out of the world at the sound of Peggy's voice saying _what's left of the 401st_ , with more white light on a railway bridge and waking up after he thought he'd given his life, with the red of the exploding factory, with - 

All of it. 

"Have you ever really noticed," Bucky says, conversationally, into the silence Steve can't fill, "how completely and utterly fucked up our lives are?" 

This laugh punches through the choking in Steve's throat, gets caught on the edges of it and comes out ragged. "Yeah," he says. "A bit." 

And there's some of the old acid, twisting in his gut, and he can't stop himself from the vicious, savage tail end of the thought, _falling in the last lap again, Rogers_ , because what right does he have to be fucked up now, over this? Things past, things over, things that don't matter because the only things that aren't how he always wanted are - 

"You know," Bucky's voice breaks his thoughts again, "the thing is, I fucking _knew_ you'd just find bigger things to fucking pick fights with. Throw yourself at. Because you wouldn't know who you were if you weren't pushing yourself till you fell over, till you found something that'd fucking lay you out." He shifts a little, working his right arm around Steve's shoulder. "Scared the shit out of me, because when I was bigger then you at least I could take some of'em if you couldn't, and then I wasn't anymore. Used to be you'd beat the shit out of yourself in your head if you weren't doing shit that'd wear out guys twice your size and four times healthier, and I _knew_ you'd just scale that right the fuck up. And you did, and I was right, I couldn't take them either." 

"What's your point?" Steve says, after he swallows a couple times around the new lump. And he expects to feel guilty, to feel like shit, looking back across memory to the shape of Bucky, glued to his side all the way from Austria back to fucking Italy, pale and red-eyed and stubborn as Hell, but mostly he just feels . . . sad. Tired and sad, looking back at them, back then. Instead of wanting to smack that past self, he just wants to take the idiot aside and say, _listen_ \- 

"My point is you got fucked up, Steve," Bucky says, quietly, cutting through the thoughts and cutting them dead. "You crashed a fucking airplane and knew you were gonna die. You drowned and froze at the same fucking time. When you woke up everyone you ever cared about was dead except Peggy and that didn't help because it turned out your one true love went on and had a life and kids and grandkids with someone else and yeah, Steve," he says, raising his voice a little as Steve shifts and the start of an argument tries to get itself into shape, "I fucking know you're happy for her and proud of her but you're fucking heartbroken for _you_ , just like _anyone fucking would be_. That's enough to fuck _anyone_ up, and then Jesus Christ let's not even talk about any-fucking-thing to do with me." And the twisted up joke in the words isn't enough to cover the rest up, but he's not done, and the words are light enough that Steve lets him skip over them. Thinks it's probably okay. Hopes it is. 

"You're only not-so-fucked-up compared to me, Steve," Bucky says, and Steve expects there to be black humour there but mostly it just like regret, and somehow that makes it hit harder, "and that's a shitty fucking comparison. My point is that pretty much everyone thinks it's a fucking miracle you've kept from falling on your face _this_ far, and I'm only not fucking surprised because I know you better than they do." 

It's easier to fall back on old patterns, again, and it's what Steve does. "Thanks for the forewarning, then," he says, mock-sour and knows Bucky rolls his eyes without having to look. 

"Yeah, because you listen so well when I tell you you're gonna fuck yourself up," Bucky retorts. "That works every fucking time. Yeah, I knew you were gonna crash, Steve - and that's what you're doing, if you haven't figured that out yet. You've got, what, two fucking years of going flat out by now, two years of pretending you were okay before that? You were always gonna hit a bad day and end up on your ass, and I know what that looks like." 

Steve considers asking how Bucky knows he had a bad day, but he's already got the answer before he manages to get it out, so instead he says, "You followed me again today, didn't you," and lets the tone of voice be his sigh. 

Because honestly asking at all is trying to get away from the ache the rest of the words leave, and that's probably a waste of time and effort, and he's - 

Well. 

Tired. 

Steve can feel when Bucky shrugs, not particularly repentant. "I do that sometimes," he says. "If I'm edgy and don't have anything else I actually want to do. I live in hope for the day you fucking notice," he adds, but there's nothing to it, not really. Then, after a minute, Bucky says, "I know she's slipping away from you, Steve. And I'm sorry." 

Tears make his eyes blur, but Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and manages to blink them away, maybe, for now. "Yeah, well," he says, clearing his throat. "Nothing anybody can do about it. And I can wish all I want, won't help." 

"I know," Bucky says, right hand resting on Steve's top shoulder. Then he says, "But I'm not going anywhere, you know." He shifts, sliding down the couch; Steve shifts himself, too, until Bucky can work both his arms around Steve's torso, resting both hands on his ribs. "You're stuck with me, now. Fuck," he says, and laughs softly, "I'm not gonna even tell you how many times I _tried_ to go, first winter, and ended up back here. Nowhere else . . . _worked_." 

Now Steve's head hurts, a kind of ache he knows too well; it'll go away in a while and there's not much he can do about it. His mind feels bruised, abraded, and that's probably why he just asks, "Why did you come back? Any of the times. Not that I'm not fucking grateful you did, but - " 

"Hn," Bucky says, and there's a little bit of laughter at himself in the sound, edged and not very kind. "It was the only place I could rest. The only place I _could_ fucking fall over, when I got so tired I couldn't remember how to fucking stand up. I used . . ." he trails off and half lifts his left hand to dismiss something, "some drug or other to sleep before that and I ran out, I don't even know what the fuck it was. Whatever they always used on me, I raided their hole before I left. I ran out, I started to fucking go insane, until I got here. Anywhere else I couldn't . . . stop, I couldn't turn off - I couldn't rest. I could, here. You might have scared the shit out of me," he adds, moving his left hand to curve behind one of Steve's, "but I could fall over and pass out here." He pauses and with more of the edged amusement adds, "In the corner of the closet. For a couple hours." 

Steve feels himself smile, a little, unwilling. He spreads his fingers to let Bucky's slide between and then curves his hand closed. "I'm sorry," he says. Feels the words like a weight on his chest. 

"Hey, I sleep fine now," Bucky says, bland, and Steve can't _not_ snort, or push himself up with one hand on Bucky's chest to make sure he _sees_ the Look this time. 

"No you don't," he says, and Bucky's trying for a half-smirk and innocent eyes at once, which never works. 

"In comparison," Bucky replies, and Steve sits up enough to free one hand to mess up his hair, because it's the only thing he can think to do. Bucky ducks his head out of the way and grins. 

"And that's not what I meant," Steve says. "I meant - " But Bucky cuts him off. 

"What, this?" and he gestures to them and gives Steve a sardonic look. "Wow, Steve, this is just terrible. I mean, it's not like I fucking crawl on the couch with you all the fucking time, or sit there being fucking crazy until you drag me up - " 

Steve sits on the impulse, the urge to hit him and tries, "That's not -" 

"Yeah," Bucky interrupts, "just shut up and think about what you're gonna say now for a second before you say it and feel stupid it made it all the way out of your mouth, especially by now and after dealing with my shit for this long." And when Steve can't figure out what to fucking _say_ to that, not with Bucky just _looking_ at him and waiting, Bucky says, "Congratulations, Steve, you can officially handle more shit than just about everyone else, way more shit than me, and if you really had to you could probably pull yourself together and go plan a fucking invasion or fend one off, but you don't, so shut up, come here and lie down again already." 

Steve's throat closes again, and he looks down at where his hand's resting on the cloth of Bucky's shirt before he says, "Sometimes I kind of hate you," before he lets Bucky's hand on his shoulder pull him back down. And it's a lie, it's the biggest lie in his fucking life and _fuck_ \- 

"Yeah, clearly," Bucky replies, fingers of his right hand threading through Steve's hair now as Steve rests his head on Bucky's shoulder, listening to Bucky's voice as a buzz through bone and muscle and skin as much as through the air and trying to keep his breath steady and something like calm. 

Then Bucky says, quieter, "There's a lot of shit I can't do, Steve, not yet, maybe not ever, but I'm not going anywhere and you're not gonna fuck me up just by being a mess." Then he adds, "Besides. You're a pretty tame mess. You don't even have a tabloid spread. Let alone a blast radius." 

Steve ends up laughing, weakly. "Probably only because none of the photographers know where we live." 

"If they show up, Mercedes'll just throw rocks at them until they leave," Bucky says, dismissively. 

Breathing gets hard, or at least hard to keep even again, so Steve doesn't answer. But after a minute, when that passes, he finds Bucky's left hand with his own and pulls it up to rest against his forehead for a minute. "Fuck I missed you," he says, quiet and a little ragged, and lets it stand in for everything he can't figure out how to even wrap his head around beyond a kind of desperate, clinging prayer that _I'm not going anywhere_ could be one of the promises that fucking stay. 

"Yeah," Bucky says. He brushes his left thumb over Steve's fingers. "I know."


End file.
